Milkhouse Mouse

"War, Fascism, concentration camps, rubber truncheons, atomic bombs, etc., are what we daily think about, and therefore to a great extent what we write about, even when we do not name them openly. We cannot help this. When you are on a sinking ship, your thoughts will be about sinking ships." --George Orwell (1903-1950)[Thanks to Alex Constantine @ http://aconstantineblacklist.blogspot.com/]

Sunday, May 20

Can Democrat "Eliot Ness's" Damned Soul be Salvaged?

I don't belong to any organized party. I'm a Democrat.--American humorist Will RogersThe fix is in.--American journalist Chris Floyd

When the Democrat Party was wandering lost in the U.S. House of Representatives' purgatory of powerless for long twelve years under demeaning Republican leaders, "Bulldog" Henry Waxman of California reinvented himself into something of a savior for the Common Citizen's tax dollars, a man who fearlessly ferreted out fraud and graft of cross-aisle political rivals.

In 2005, The Nation's David Corn was so impressed with Waxman's crime-busting prowess that he benighted him the "Democrats' Eliot Ness," an allusion to actor Robert Stack's tough, no-nonsense FBI agent (left) who waged a holy war on mobster Al Capone's Chicago-based crime network every week from 1959-1963 on the ABC TV series The Untouchables.

But once Waxman was given subpoena power as chair of the House Oversight and Reform Committee with the Dems' sweep to power on The Hill last November, he has proven himself every bit as miscast for taking the next step in fighting America's Public Enemy No. # 1 as Kevin Cosner was in his flaccid, uncertain interpretation of Ness in Brian DePalma's1987 movie version of the TV show.

Since Waxman and party colleagues assumed leadership of the 110th Congress in January, their six years of scoring points with voters through regular installments of media angst and outrage over the Bush administration's fraud, graft and outright criminality has not translated to anything close to comparable urgency in righting the litany of wrongs.

For example, Michigan's John Conyers, House Judiciary Committee chair, has refused to follow-up on plans for hearings on the constitutional crisis evidenced in the infamous but now ignored 2002 Downing Street memo auguring "fixed" intelligence justifying war in Iraq, the illegal worldwide torture and warrantless NSA wiretapping of innocent Americans.

Conyers now spends his days pulling his punches by selectively probing the Justice Department's politicized firing (and replacement) of nine U.S. Attorneys; he refuses to connect the dots on how the DoJ is implicated in massive suppression of The Black Vote that he and fellow Democrats uncovered in the pivotal swing state of Ohio following the 2004 elections. During those hearings computer program Clinton Curtis told Conyers under oath that Rep. Tom Freeny (R-FL)--now a House Judiciary committee GOP member-- asked Curtis in October 2000 to write an undetectable software program to surreptitiously "flip the vote 51 to 49" percent in favor of Florida GOP candidates for the upcoming elections. (1)

Nor are there any signs any Dem leader plans to review the Bush administration's termination of habeas corpus with passage of the egregious Military Commission Act of 2006, a bill that Georgetown University constitutional law professor Jonathan Turley assures us will eventually be applied to used on U.S. citizens the president of Defense Secretary chooses to designate an "enemy combatant."

Waxman also has proven that his vow to investigate the massive fraud and waste surrounding Hurricane Katrina and reconstruction is meaningless, perhaps in no small part because First Brother and Florida Gov. Jeb Bush is implicated in one of those myriad scam contracts; Waxman has yet to follow up with a subpoena a February 2008 letter of inquiry requesting Brother Bush's role in a "boondoggle contract" with Carnival Cruise to temporarily house those Katrina made homeless he sent a year ago before he had the power to really do something about it.

eMissive to Henry

Well aware of Bulldog Waxman's masochistic penchant for sending long-ignored letters to the criminally complicit, I sent an e-missive to his House Oversight Committee to blow the whistle on another urgent matter long needing meaningful congressional oversight.

Dear Chairman Waxman:

Should you decide to live up to David Corn's billing you in The Nation as the "Democrats' Eliot Ness," (http://www.thenation.com/doc/20050214/corn), I have a whistle to blow on a 5.5 year cover-up desperately requiring real congressional oversight.

The link to the online video below demonstrates that you should immediately hold an inquiry into the unimpeachable litany of firsthand accounts--by survivors, TV reporters and first responders at Ground Zero--attesting to hearing secondary explosions prior to the collapse of WTC# 1 and 2--evidence strangely ignored in the 2002 and 2004 congressional and 9/11 Commission whitewashes of the attack on America.

Should you no longer choose to abet the 9/11 cover-up since acquiring subpoena power in January, please begin reclamation of your forfeited soul by inviting former FBI linguist Sibel Edmonds to testify before you and Oversight committee members. I promise you will be very impressed with her evidence.

Among the involvement of other American conspirators, she can demonstrate that former GOP House Speaker Dennis Hastert had foreknowledge of pre-9/11 preparations for the attacks (e.g., www.justacitizen.com).

PS: I now fully expect your office to pass along my name and address to some secret government "watch list" for the burgeoning number of Americans incapable of accepting the Official Myth palmed off as an explanation for the Nine Eleven attacks.

After hitting the send button, Waxman's website gave me this response:

Thank You For Your Interest.

Thank you for contacting the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.

And thank you, Mr. Waxman, for your interest. But I hope you're more interested in reclaiming your bartered soul.

Why not send him a reminder that his and the nation's souls await a level of congressional oversight commensurate with the Bush White House's crime wave from 2000 to 2006?

Notes

1. Though the video made it difficult to accurately identify U.S. House Democrats during the 13 December 2004 quizzing of Curtis, those present, according to Columbus, OH-based Free Press journalists Bob Fitrakis, Steve Roseneld and Harvey Wasserman, were "Conyers and Reps. Stephanie Tubbs-Jones (D-OH), Ted Strickland (D-OH), Jerold Nadler (D-NY), Maxine Waters (D-CA) as well as Rep. Jesse Jackson, Jr (D-IL)."

Tuesday, May 1

With my humble language skills insufficient to prepare viewers for what the BBC reports in the clip below, let me instead simply excerpt introductory remarks proffered at LiveLeak.com, where it is archived:

"Thank God For Dead Soldiers"The most hated family in America, the Westboro Baptist Church, who hates soldiers and pickets soldiers' funerals. They also hate fags, which, by their definition, is anybody who isnt [sic] one man and one woman [sic?].

Well, hey.... I don't believe I could do any better. Perhaps a French surrealist novelist could.

In any event, I firmly believe viewers, after watching this 9-minute report, are adroitly positioned to answer author Thomas Frank's rhetorical question posed years ago in the title of his book What's the Matter with Kansas?

On the other hand, a pranking Australian interviewer in the next clip has an entirely different approach to the Kansan fundamentalists, particularly to their patriarchal leader who showed up with his followers in another public action in Greensboro, North Carolina.